Like Drawing Blood

CVI; 2006

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I've seen a guide to the pronunciation of Gotye ("gore-ti-yeah") and I'm still not sure I'm getting it right. In a lot of ways, it's a name built for the modern world-- difficult to say but extremely easy to search for on the Internet. Its very unpronuncability is what makes it stick in your brain. Gotye is one guy, Wally De Backer, who lives in Melbourne but originally hails from Belgium. He's a talented singer/songwriter/producer, emphasis on the singer part of that equation. His voice is precise yet malleable, running from smoothly soaring to roughly resigned, and his falsetto pierces like a light in the shadowy landscape of his music.

Like Drawing Blood, De Backer's second Gotye LP, is full of dark pop, produced with an open clarity that separates the numerous sounds and consequently comes off as huge and sweeping. There's a definite ring of the 80s to it as well, with its deliberate drum programming, big synth pads and romantic melodicism. I could see Peter Gabriel doing "Night Drive" for sure, given the vaguely global tinge added by the hints of tamboura at the beginning and the piles of hand percussion that bubble up at the end.

It's not the only feint toward worldbeat-- De Backer nods to Middle Eastern and South Asian modes and instrumentation on the opening verses of "The Only Way", both in his pentatonic vocal melody and the brief interrupting phrases played on a nasal instrument that sounds like a shenai but could just as easily be a synth or weirdly played sax. Horns play a big role in the album's most obvious single, the minor Aussie hit "Learnalilgivinanlovin", which opens with some pretty Spector-ish drums and launches into an insanely catchy tune backed with swelling horns and De Backer's many-tiered self-harmonizing. A baritone sax zigzags through the verses, teasing the vocals. It's a great song, even though it ends with a percussion solo.

The other big standout-- "Heart's a Mess"-- sounds a lot like its animated video looks. In the video, long-legged machine-creatures stalk a ravaged mechanical countryside in the moonlight and ultimately float off into space. A simple but effective organ figure balances De Backer's softly delivered verses with an off-kilter counterpart, egging him on to the song's climax, where he rises to a full shout on the lines "It makes no sense/ But I'm desperate to connect." Judging by the sounds here, the connection isn't going to happen anytime soon, and he'll probably be wandering in the moonlight for quite a while.

By and large, Like Drawing Blood is at least close to this level, but I'm trying to figure out what happens in its last third. After the unexpected dub detour of "Puzzle with a Piece Missing", the album veers off course with "A Distinctive Sound", a sample-heavy DJ workout in the vein of the Avalanches and Amon Tobin. I wouldn't call it bad, but it's certainly incongruous and less satisfying and, ironically, also less distinct than De Backer's vocal turns. It's followed by a meandering, melodica-topped dub instrumental. While they won't send you running for the hills, the presence of these tracks is confusing, and it can't help feeling like they're shoved near the back of the running order for a reason.

That doesn't make it a bad album, just a flawed one. At its worst, it feels like it's gone off on a tangent, but De Backer never fails to come back to his strengths, even if he sometimes takes a whole song to do it. On the whole, the balance comes out in his favor, and at its best, Like Drawing Blood is memorable and captivating.